Kassurina's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Kassurina knew the names now. Rapunzel and Ella. But names were not enough. Before she wasted a single spell on recruiting Ella, she had to be certain the girl carried true witch blood. She climbed again to the high chamber of her dark-stone castle, where moss crept down the walls and the salt pentagram waited on the floor. She sat inside the circle and crossed her legs. The crimson-stained salt pressed cold against her skin. She spoke the old words. One by one the black candles flared to life around the star's edge. The air thickened. Her body lifted from the floor until she hung above the salt, arms loose at her sides. Blood welled in her eyes and ran down her cheeks in dark lines. The visions came. She saw a girl asleep in cold hearth ashes. She saw the same girl grown, weeping at a hazel tree over a headstone. Where the tears fell, dead grass turned green. A white bird dropped from the branches and laid a golden dress across the girl's arms. Kassurina's breath caught. The blood was real. Ella was a witch, and she did not know it. The vision shifted. Ella rode in a carriage through open country, a young man beside her. They passed through tall iron gates and climbed the steps of a sprawling stone manor. Not the palace. An old family estate, far from the court and its guards. Ella stepped down and walked alone toward the hazel tree. The candles guttered. Kassurina sank to the floor. She wiped the blood from her face and smiled. "Mirror, Mirror on the wall." The tall golden mirror rippled. The pale man took shape inside it, white hair loose, grey eyes fixed on her. "The girl is true," Kassurina said. "And she has left the palace. She is at her family’s abandoned estate. No walls I cannot pass. No hunters at the gate." "Then take her," Azkarath said. "Not by force." Kassurina rose and faced the glass. "Her magic sleeps. It only wakes through real grief. I cannot drag a sleeping witch into the rite. I must draw her out and make her open the door herself." "You know what wakes her." Kassurina looked at the fading vision of the hazel tree over the grave. The mother. The white bird. The one wound the girl had never closed. "Her mother," she said. "The dead woman under that tree. That is the lure." Azkarath's grey eyes did not move. "Then wear a face she will follow." The mirror went dark. Kassurina stood alone with the burnt candles and the blood drying on the salt. The obstacle was gone. She knew Ella was a witch, knew where she stood unguarded, and knew the one grief that would pull her close. Now she had a new task. To reach Ella, she would have to steal the shape of a dead mother.